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Custard Ice Cream

A custard-based ice cream made with cream, milk, sugar, eggs, lemon, and vanilla.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 6 ingredients
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Why it works: Milk and vanilla are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 5% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 19,187 recipes. Both carry ethyl caproate, which smells fruity, apple peel. The science ↓

Custard Ice Cream

Ingredients

Directions

Make the custard

  1. Heat the milk in a custard kettle.

  2. Beat the eggs with the sugar, or omit the whites of 10 eggs.

  3. Add the milk to the egg mixture, strain, and cook until thickened, stirring constantly.

Flavour and freeze

  1. Once cold, add lemon, vanilla (either in powder or extract), and a little grated lemon peel.

  2. Freeze the mixture.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Milk + vanillatop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,187 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl caproate (fruity, apple peel).

  2. Sugar + vanillatop 8% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together35,032 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-damascenone (apple, rose).

  3. Cream + sugartop 9% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together43,450 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,3-butanedione (butter, sweet).

  4. Lemon + vanillatop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together5,961 recipes

    Shared aroma: eucalyptol (eucalyptus, herbal).

  5. Milk + lemontop 15% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together19,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Sugar and vanilla barely smell alike, yet cooks put them together in 35,032 recipes: they work on texture and structure more than aroma.

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Eggs
Egg yolks thicken the custard as they cook, giving the ice cream its rich body.
Sugar
Sweetens the base and, with the eggs, helps give the frozen texture a smooth softness.
Milk
Forms the liquid base that the eggs thicken into a custard.
Cream
Adds fat, which makes the frozen ice cream richer and smoother.

The step that matters

Cook the custard until thickened. Egg proteins set as the mixture heats, thickening the base. Stirring constantly keeps the eggs from cooking unevenly and curdling on the bottom of the pan.

Swap the lemon

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cream, sugar, milk, egg, vanilla):

  1. Strawberryfits better
  2. Figfits better
  3. Coconutfits better
  4. Lemonthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cream, sugar, milk, egg, vanilla. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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